Start at 9:05
Tilahun is welcoming and introducing the State Minister Dr. Abera and Alain Vidal, Director of the CPWF.
Tilahun is providing soem intiila context for this workshop.
  • Ethiopia has high povertya nd resource degradtion
  • Ethiopia is now embarking on a five year Growtha nd Transformation program

38 different institutions

*capacity building
*knowledge sharing
*improved decision making

-We need to discuss together the next steps

Tilahun is leading the participants through the goals of the workshop and the agenda for the day.

Thanking His Excellency Dr. Abera. And inviting him to open this workshop.

Dr. Abera speech

  • Hnoured to welcome this gathering
  • to share views and also learn from the lessons of the CPWF
  • Water is key for agriculture and livelihoods
  • On behalf of MoWr, wleocme you all to the NBDC workshop
  • Economy of ethiopia depends on agriculture
  • 44% of GDP
  • Most pop lives in the highlands
  • rainfall variability is high

Recording of welcoming speech by Carlos Sere [LINK TO VIDEO CLIP]

  • Presentation by Alain Vidal, Director of the CPWF [LINK TO PRESENTATION]
  • Lessons
  • Start with story: about research for development made in Uganda where researchers were looking at water issues. Termites were destroying any attempt to reseed degraded pasture. innovation came from researchers at Unviersity of makerere and capture an itneresting innovation at a workshop in Ethiopia. They organised community coralling of cattle for two weeks with permited pature establisnment. Rapidly the area re-greened.
  • When we try to address the water issues, we often end up addresisng a water, land, soil issue
  • reducing hunger=reducing rural poverty
  • our prorgam looks at reducing rurla poverty, improving livelihoods and ensuring that poor people cna cope with short term and long term changes
  • resilience challenge--we cannot change the food commodity prices or the climate change. but we can help peopel to cope with lcoala nd global changes. we cna help them to beocme more reislient. This is achieved through imprving water pridtcivity
  • need to also look at rurla people empowerment, equity and market access, health issues, ecosystems services
  • example of making sociala nd ecologicial systems more equitable:
  • mobilise triggers for change between alternate reislient states
  • CPWF aism to increase the resilience of social ad ecological systems
  • we have broad partnerships--more than 200 instituions
  • it conducts researchs that leasds to impact on the poor and to policy change
  • Phase 2--working in 6 basins
  • Andes- benefit-sharing mechanisms
  • Mekong- dams and livelihoods
  • Nile- rainwater management in Ethiopia
  • Volta- Small reservioirs, rainwatera nd livelihoods
  • Limpopo- small reservoirs, rainwater and livelihoods
  • Ganges-floods and salt in the Delta
  • 'helping our partners achieve impacta nd capacity'
  • challenge is to improve rrual livelihoods and their resilience through a landscape approach to rainwater management in the Ethiopia highlands
  • research will develop appropriate, landscape level
  • Established a growing network of partners--but only the beginning, we hope that this will grow
  • impact pathway
  • we want toa chieve impact and we have a numbe rof input strtageies that will leade to outptus and outcomes
  • we should be responsive to emereging opportunities
  • don't just focus on water-also recognise soils, land and other components

*Presentation on the NBDC by TIlahun Amede [LINK TO PRESENTATION]
  • importance for awm in ethiopia
  • gave context about rainwater and soil etc in Ethiopia
  • study sites: Diga, Fogera, Jeldu
  • working principles:
    • stronger partnerships
    • interdicisplinary research
    • capacity building
    • gender and diversity
    • learning and documentation and communication
    • Innovation for action
  • target groups:
    • farmers and communities
    • development actors (extension agents, NGOs)
    • Planners
    • Policy makers
    • regional organisations
    • investors
    • researchers
  • important to change practcies of researchers themselves
  • issues for discussion:
    • moving into non-conventional forntiers: rainwater
    • maintaining and forming unusual partnerships
    • dealing with diversitya dn complexity
    • farm communities taking charge slowly
    • institutional arrangements are complex
    • capacity to scale up complex NRM agenda limited
    • Non-coherent approaches, institutional mandate

*Presentation by Daniel Denano and Dejene Abesha-on National Context: sustainable land management for agricultural water management [LINK TO COPY OF PRESENTATION]
  • Daniel Denano
    • establishing baseline on carbon
    • priority areas of investment:
      • agriculture water (irrigation)
      • agricultural water management technologies and approaches
      • natural resource management and utlisation (land, ag water dev, forest and forest by products)
      • capacity building
      • strengthening networking
  • Dejene Abesha
    • essential prerequisites for scaling up successful AWM technologies and approaches
    • 1. Aspiration for change
    • 2. Active community-based participation
      • the beneficiary communities should take the driver seat
    • 3. securing land and water user rights
      • ensuring water use permits
      • ensuring land use permits
    • 4. Social capital
      • communities have a vital role in promoting change
      • where possible build on and strengthen
    • 5. Quick and tangible benefits
      • tangible financial and/or social benefits to the community or individual are a prerequisite for adoption
    • 6. Market opportunities
    • 7. Offer a choice of technologies rather than single standard solutions
    • 8. Multi-sectoral and integrated approach

*Doug Merrey presentation [LINK TO PRESENTATION]
  • move from participation/consultation to community responsibility, empowerment through demand-based programs
    • strengthen partnerships of farmers, DAs, researchers, other stakeholders
    • transform performance evaluation of officials from achievements based on targets to assessment and incentives based on clients' (farmers') feedback
    • promote community responsibility and collective action to solve their own problems.

Questions:
1. (Advisor to Pres of Amhara region) are these issues really problems form us experts or from the beneficiaries?
  • and why do communities fail to manage their resources? can you comment on institutional and social components of NRM
2. sustainable land management in the highlands.are there experiences to share from the world with Ethiopia to improve the conditions there?
3. (birhanu from eth econ ass, senior researcher in forestry dept.)- 3 issues of doug present:
  • expected to hear about some map/atlas-pop growth and migration impacts on land management, change in livelihoods
  • investment in land management--what about value additions; what has happened in terms of investment and its impact; the way investment has been done
4. (seleshi bekele)
  • to Doug---need to elaborate on how to balance between community driven approaches and need for scientific knowledge
  • to Dejene- is SLM recommending this paradigm?
5. (Bharat) are there good examples in Ethiopia/ working laboratories like we have in India?
6. (Amare)-to Doug
  • Office18


4:30- Session on moving forward

Amanda Harding is facilitating this session.
  • We now have our first set of results from N1 that was presented
  • What does this mean for your engagement with the changes that we are trying to achieve?

Doug is (re)presenting his last two slides
  • What is our vision?
  • My vision for next 20 years includes that land is being used productively, lots of biomass is being produced, people are well fed, children are going to school, there is alot of tourism.
  • What is the vision for Ethiopian?
  • NBDC is a unique opp to build on past opps, to build new partneships, to draw on new perspectives, new data and information from research, get to the new stage of a sustainable land and water management program
  • ethiopia needs to go to a new level of consultation-to programs which empower communities, based on interactions, they should take onwership
  • critical to work with communities-not only to est technical innovations, but also instituional innovations
  • importance of strengthening plicy support for sustainable demand-driven research based rainwater management programs

Q: Where do you see your enagamenet, committmenyt-what would this look like? for achieving wider vision but also objectives of the NBDC?

(Dr. Belay, Arba Minch University)- we have a tradition of training students at MSc and Phd level and are invovled in research activities. I see my institute fitting in the scientific components. We cna engage students in those activities. We are on board!

*IUCN--what we are doing in the region?
  • water governance
  • creating opportunities for communities to be empowered, organise themselves, use results and knowledge
  • water user associations and other
  • working in Uganda, have done some in Ethiopia before
  • we would like to pursue a link with this project
  • another area is- adaptation to climate change, especially on the community level
  • how do communities adapt and sustain themselves under climate change. This project can/should look at this--and IUCN is working on this
  • Project in Tanzania, shared in Ethiopia, partnering with GWP-based here in Addis Ababa

*ASARECA
  • we work in 10 countries
  • 9 are Nile basin countries
  • there is a link with what ASARECA is doing in NRM
  • we are working on adoption
  • ASARECA can play a role in promoting technologies in other Nile countries
  • another project we are launching in Northern Ethiopia- management of water technologies to enhance productivity
  • capacity enhancement-we want to help other scientists int eh region learn from the methods, experiences, results etc


Q from Amanda-how can we engage on the National and policy level?
  • (Daniel Denano)- fraemwork for all SLM actvities int eh country--platform
  • national level steering committee
  • technical committeee-most organisations engage with this
  • opp for theis porgram to work with SLM--as long as its topic areas matches
  • already been working with Tilahun
*(Dejene Abesha)
  • rainwater harvesting is the best entry point for sustainable development
  • challenges in promoting technologies
  • hope this program can bring in new technologies
  • feed results from research projects into the extension system
  • based in Addis cna syngerise efforts to the gov
  • leading a project on irrigation--one intervention is water harvesting
  • we are stranded in implementing water harvesting--
  • we would also like to see knowledge sharing and tehcnical sharing that we could also use to get information out to the areas where we work


*(prof. associatio of economists)
  • membership of over 3000
  • independent think tank group
  • giving feedback on gov policy
  • very popular in country nd sub-continenet
  • over 30 staff, around 15 senior research positions
  • policy research in 4 areas
    • micro econ
    • ag and NRM
    • poverty and HR
    • ??
  • partnership with IWMI and another project on climate change and water storage
  • EEA contributes alot in terms of communicating research--we have a good forum organised on thematic issues, for all aspects of development in Ethiopia

*Aster (ICRAF)
  • ag landscapes play a crucial role in terms of water management and also livelihoods
  • ICRAF is a partner in terms of land use change assessment, soil health and identifying important species in terms of soil fertility--to integrate this into ag landscapes
  • we are looking for National partners?

Amanda-are ambitions are multi-scale. we are getting better at our action research, we are not so good at doing the National partnership level. how do we creta ehte platforms and alliances? how do we find mechansisms to help with adoption of interventions? how can we become better performers so we cna sit at teh table and discuss our research results and contribute to impact on the ground.


*Closing words by Tilahun
  • commitments will be followed up
  • we are dedicated to amking this consortium work
  • we will come back to you
  • we are looking forward to consolidated action
  • next step for us to her some final feedbakc from you all
Participants reflections:

  • ASARECA- we need to move away from the idea that no imapct can come from 3-4-5 year projects. We need to track the kind of chnages on the ground with repsect to the outcomes you have proposed. We need to committ ourselves to achieveing impact ont eh ground.

*this is a greta gathering with alot of stakeholders from National and regional bodies. combining the scientific communities with others-we learn alot from each other. we have to plan practically. seeing impact on NMR is 3-4 years may be difficult but we have to do a minimum of concrete technology innovations. We have to focus. We don't have to start from scracth--the syntehsis has shown us what ahs bene done and learned and where we cna go further. We need to work with the real actors, the people int eh communities, the real workers.

*(Abeba Fanta)-

*)Don Peden)-i was struck by comments during the day.we cna go deeper and learn alot more. Rec--needs to be a deeper lit review to amke sure we are not misisng out on knowledge from other countries, highland areas, mountian programs, ICIMOD.


  • Closing by Seleshi bekele
- CGIAR reform update
many MPs will betaregting Ethiopia and the Nile
there are many opportunities out there